


from the house that built me

by missmichellebelle



Series: it's dangerous to go alone (take this) [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, EreriWritingPrompt, Established Relationship, Fluff, Going Home, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Married Couple, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 03:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: Levi has seen the way Eren looks at this place. This house is a monument to his childhood, and he loves it for that. And maybe Levi will never understand that first-hand, but he can empathize.Anyone with that kind of attachment to a place is bound to feel some kind of sadness when it’s gone.





	from the house that built me

**Author's Note:**

> for [ereri writing prompt's](https://ereri-writing-prompts.tumblr.com) January prompt:  
> 
>
>> **hiraeth.**  
>  a _homesickness for a home to which you cannot return_ , a home which maybe never was

There’s a silence settled over their apartment that Levi has become unaccustomed to since he stopped living on his own. Since Eren became a part of his life. After all, Eren is hardly what anyone would call  _ quiet _ .

He listens to music when he cooks, and keeps the TV on a low murmur when he’s doing chores. He murmurs the words aloud when he reads, and he makes such a production of himself when he plays video games that he’s made a career out of it. But even at times when most people are quiet, Eren emits some kind of white noise—his thoughtfulness punctuated by the rhythmic drumming of his fingers, his impatience amplified by the tapping of his foot. Almost as if just by moving around, Eren creates a telltale buzz in the air.  

It… Had been quite an adjustment for Levi, at first. He used to long for the quiet solitude of his home, a place where he could leave the headache inducing noise of the city and his job behind. Back then, he’d equated  _ quiet _ to  _ peace _ .

But having Eren in Levi’s life in  _ any _ capacity had been an adjustment, and now Levi’s idea of home, his idea of  _ peace _ , is Eren’s own personal frequency.

Now, when there’s silence, it’s deafening. Empty and cold and hostile—a slinking presence over Levi’s skin that feels like a bad omen. He knows something is wrong the moment he opens the door, and something cold grips at his chest as he rushes into the darkness of their apartment in something like panic.

Eren is there. Curled up on the window seat in the living room, forehead pressed to the glass, holding a reluctant Bowser prisoner in his arms. The sight of him banishes the sudden onslaught of horrible situations Levi had managed to concoct on the short trip from their front door to the living room archway, and relief floods his lungs as his shoulders slump.

Of course Eren is there. Why wouldn’t he be? Levi’s imagination just had a random, overactive malfunction, that’s all. Just a sudden bout of ridiculousness.

(Although he should probably stop letting Eren talk him into watching Liam Neeson movies before bed just to be safe.)

The cat notices him first, turning his head and catching Levi in his yellow eyes. He mewls pathetically, squirming in Eren’s arms, but he must not have been as trapped as he seemed—he easily works his way free, leaping from Eren’s lap in a single bound. He scampers over to Levi, shedding hair against the ankles of his slacks in greeting.

“Electricity bill particularly bad this month?” Levi asks, finally breaking the unsettling quiet. He flicks on the overhead lights, but Eren doesn’t so much as flinch in response. Bowser meows again, giving Levi’s leg one last rub, and then goes to squeeze himself into his favorite napping place beneath the couch.

Levi watches him go, mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown as the quiet settles heavier and heavier around him.

It’s tempting to break it again, but this time, Levi simply waits.

“My mom sold the house,” Eren finally says after only a few tense minutes, but he still keeps his eyes trained on his own reflection in the window and the glowing cityscape beyond.

It takes a moment for the news to register completely. For Levi to turn it over and over again, and properly digest it and everything it means.

It’s bad news six months in the making, when Carla had come to the decision to sell the family home and move across the country to be closer to Eren. At the time, it had seemed like good news. In fact, after Eren had moved past being upset at his mother for making the decision without talking to him first, he’d been excited. Moving seemed like the logical thing for his mother to do, and Levi had been mildly impressed by how uncharacteristically  _ reasonable _ Eren was being about all of it.

Now, Levi can see the weight of what’s happening register in Eren’s tense, rigid lines and his utter stillness.

They’ve been married three years—together for six, friends for eight—and in all that time, Levi has never once been to Eren’s childhood home. With Levi’s own family here in California, Carla had always taken it upon herself to come to  _ them _ . Every occasion, every holiday, every time she simply missed her only son.

Eren had seemed content with the arrangement, and had never fought with her on it. He’d never even expressed any sort of longing or urge to go back to where he’d been raised, even when Levi’s work brought them within driving distance. It was always a,  _ hey mom, we’re in New York, want to drive down for a day and we’ll take you around the city? _

Levi wonders now if maybe he should have pushed at that mystery more, rather than be complacent with the system they had in place. Maybe he’d be a better husband if he forced his own discomfort more.

His frown deepens.

Well… It’s never too late to make himself uncomfortable.

Levi deftly pulls his phone from his back pocket.

“I can take some time off work in two weeks,” he says, and as he glances up over the edge of his phone, Eren is looking back at him, his face awash with relief.

*

Early October in Los Angeles is practically still summer—weather only dips under 70 after the sun goes down, California’s only promise that it’s slowly but surely cooling down. Levi thought he was sick of it, that he couldn’t wait for their mild never-below-50 depths of winter and the few scattered showers they might be lucky enough to get this year.

But early October in New Hampshire is a  _ true _ fall, the temperature not breaking 60 even at two in the afternoon. Levi is suddenly immensely grateful that Eren forced him to bring a coat and scarf onto the plane, even if it had felt ridiculous at the time. Outside the window of their Uber, Portsmouth is a russet painting, nearly every tree a crisp gold if not that burnt, beautiful autumn orange. People on the streets are bundled against the chill coming off the sea, carrying steaming Starbucks cups as they pass stoops decorated with what can only be described as an alarming amount of pumpkins.

Levi sees an honest-to-god trio of scarecrows and feels a little like he’s fallen into a postcard.

“This place is such a tourist trap,” Eren mumbles, eyes fixed on the passing scenery like he can see right through all of it. But despite the even contempt in his voice, he’s been playing nervously with Levi’s fingers for the last twenty minutes. “People come in the summer for the waterfront, and they come back in the fall to drink cider and watch the leaves change.” He wrinkles his nose. “They play it up.  _ A lot _ .”

“Makes sense why you’d choose to live in LA. Not a tourist trap at all,” Levi comments, and Eren rolls his eyes and turns to look at him.

“That’s different,” he insists. “There’s more to LA than Hollywood and Highland.”

“Are you saying there’s not more to your hometown?” Levi finds that hard to believe. Eren spent the first 18 years of his life here, and children—teenagers, especially—are generally better at finding those secret spots that adults never seem able to touch.

“No.” Eren turns to look back out the window, but Levi can see the reflection of his resigned expression. “Not anymore.”

*

The Jaeger house, like most of the other houses they’ve passed, is a white colonial number with a dark roof. It has a long cobbled walk through a manicured lawn, and a set of stairs up to a wide porch that houses a swinging bench. The door is white and inset with stained glass panels, and beneath the iron numbers nailed onto the house are beautifully wrought letters that spell JAEGER.

It seems everything and nothing like the sort of place Eren would have grown up in.

Their Uber leaves them on the sidewalk, and Eren stands there and stares, hands curling in the cold as his duffle bag weighs down one shoulder.

Levi watches him and wonders what he’s thinking.

“Well.” Eren shifts his weight, and then looks at Levi. The smile on his face is just a little too tight. “Come on. Let me show you where I grew up.” He holds out his hand, and Levi takes it.

“I kissed my first boy on that swing,” Eren tells him in a low voice as they climb their way onto the steps, and Levi’s lips twitch in a smile.

“We should take it with us. I’m sure one of your fans would pay thousands for it.”

Eren laughs, and it seems to knock some of the tension he’s been carrying since they left the airport out of his shoulders.

“You’re not wrong.” Eren glances at the door, and then back at Levi, and grins. “Come on.” He tugs on their joined hands, leading Levi towards the bench.

“Eren, your mom is expecting us.” And most likely already knows they’re there, knowing Carla Jaeger. That woman has a sixth sense almost as terrifying as his own mother’s.

“She can wait a few more minutes,” he dismisses. “Besides…” His smile is a little brittle when he glances back at Levi. “This is one of the last times I’ll get to sit on this thing. Indulge me?”

Well. Levi can hardly argue with  _ that _ .

They sit, and Levi is astonished that there’s no sound of protest—the chains don’t cry, the wood doesn’t moan. He’s impressed.

Eren looks disheartened.

“It used to creak,” he murmurs, touching the chain links with the tips of his fingers with the kind of hesitance someone might pet a feral animal. Levi watches him carefully.

“Hey Levi,” Eren says softly after a few moments of pensive silence, turning back towards him. Levi quirks an eyebrow in response, and Eren smiles again—not so brittle this time, but there’s still a soft, saddened edge to it that makes something deep in Levi’s chest protest.

Cold fingers come up to cup Levi’s cheek, and he closes his eyes before he’s even hit with the telltale bump of Eren’s nose and the familiar press of his slightly-chapped lips.

“Now,” Eren murmurs against his lips, “I’ve kissed my first  _ and _ my last boy on this bench.”

Levi groans, dropping his face into Eren’s neck as he starts to vibrate with laughter.

“You’re an idiot.”

“That  _ you _ married, so who’s really the idiot here?”

“Still you.”

He might be an idiot, but it’s still good to hear him laugh.

“Is that my son I hear?” Carla Jaeger opens the door, her head appearing from the confines of the house to find Eren and Levi practically wrapped around each other on her front porch. For a brief moment, Levi feels a spike of panic and embarrassment, like him and Eren are  _ actually _ teenagers caught making out on a porch swing.

And then he remembers how fucking old he is and that Carla Jaeger was in the front row at their wedding, and feels adequately ridiculous.

“Hi Mom,” Eren greets with a smile that’s much more genuine than any he’s worn all day, and Levi feel some of his concern chip off and melt away.

“Were you boys planning on coming in, or did you want a few more moments alone on the swing?” There’s that same mischievous sparkle in her eyes that Levi sees so often in Eren, and were he a younger man, the insinuation might make him blush.

Although the fact that that kind of implication is coming from his  _ mother-in-law _ is reasonably mortifying.

“No,” Levi answers before Eren has the chance, and strategically untangles himself from his husband. “It’s fucking freezing out here.” Eren rolls his eyes.

“Ugh, you’re such a baby,” Eren teases, bouncing up off the swing after him, but then presses an  _ I’m just kidding _ kiss to Levi’s cheek before he makes a beeline for his mom’s arms. “Tell Levi that this is practically tropical for Portsmouth,” Eren says from his mom’s embrace, and Carla peaks around her towering son’s arms to look at Levi.

“And lie to my favorite son? I would never.”

“ _ Mom _ .”

Carla is laughing as she releases Eren, only to gesture Levi closer and into a hug of his own. It isn’t anything like being held by his own mother, but there’s a gentle strength to the action that betrays a mother’s love. Just like Eren had, Carla presses a kiss to his cheek.

“It’s always good to see you, Levi,” she says, her voice warm. When she pulls away, she keeps Levi by the shoulders and maintains eye contact. “Now tell me—has my son been behaving? Treating you right?”

Eren makes a noise of displeasure, picking up his and Levi’s bags where they left them by the door.

“I hate it when you guys are together,” he grumbles, and then uses his hip to get the door open, disappearing inside. Carla watches him go with a smile on her face, but it dims once he’s out of sight. This time, when she looks at Levi, her face is much more serious.

“How’s he doing?” She asks, pitching her voice low.

“He’s…” Levi wishes he had a straight answer. Eren doesn’t seem to have any love lost for the place where he grew up, and yet there’s a part of him that’s dragging his heels and refusing to let go. Levi chews his lip. “He’s being Eren about it.”

Carla laughs then—a bright, clear, happy sound, and then links her arm with Levi so she can properly guide him into the house.

“That sounds about right,” she hums thoughtfully. “I’m glad he has you, Levi,” she says after another moment, and the genuine sincerity of the statement almost has Levi tripping over his own feet.

He swallows, and can hear Eren’s loud, thundering footsteps on the second floor.

“I’m lucky to have him,” he responds, just as honestly.

*

Levi finds Eren upstairs, sitting on a bed in a room that is stripped of everything but its old, well-loved furniture.

“This was my room,” Eren says in a soft voice as Levi leans his shoulder against the doorframe. “She… It used to be yellow.” His voice has a horrible hollowness to it. “She painted it.”

The walls are an unimposing shade of dove grey, and there are no signs that the room was ever lived in. Levi knows that when Eren made the decision to permanently move out to LA after finishing college, he’d made a trip home and packed up most of his belongings. When him and Levi had gotten married and moved into their current apartment, cementing some kind of permanence in California, he’d gone back again and taken nearly everything else. The only things left in the room that denote anyone ever inhabited it is the few pieces of furniture—most of which Carla included in the sale of the house.

He walks over and sits beside Eren on the bed he spent his teenage years in.

“Let me guess,” he says, staring at the walls and wondering if they used to be peppered with holes that can no longer be seen. “You lost your virginity in this bed?”

Eren snorts, knocking their shoulders.

“ _ No _ ,” he responds empathically. “You know I lost it in the bed of a truck. Although…” Eren leans a little closer. “A lot of  _ other _ things happened in this bed…” His voice dips suggestively, and Levi pushes him away.

“We’re not having sex on this cesspool of teenage hormones you call a bed while your  _ mom _ is downstairs. We’re not  _ seventeen _ ,” Levi hisses between his teeth.

“Good thing, too, because if  _ you _ were seventeen, I’d be… What?  _ Five? _ ” Eren wrinkles his nose.

“Eren.”

“And if  _ I _ were seventeen, you’d be… You’d be my age. Wow.” He looks at Levi with wide eyes.

“Rethinking this whole marriage thing?” Levi asks flatly, as if the  _ age _ conversation hasn’t happened fifty million times already.

“No… Kind of just thinking about my seventeen year old self trying to seduce twenty-nine year old you…” Eren seems deeply enamoured by the fantasy he’s building up, and Levi doesn’t even fight the smile quirking at the corner of his mouth. Still, he rolls his eyes.

“Yeah? How’s that working out for him?”

“Hmm…” Eren glances over, and there’s an edge to his smile that has never meant anything but trouble. “I’m not sure.” His fingers graze against Levi’s knee and then slide infinitesimally up his thigh. “Want to roleplay and find out?”

Levi closes his eyes.

“Your mom is literally downstairs,” Levi says in a terse voice, and he can feel Eren shrug.

“And?  _ Come on _ . I’ve always kind of wanted to do this.” There’s a line of anticipation running through Eren’s words that doesn’t make Levi doubt him in the slightest. “I promise these aren’t the same sheets,” he coos in a sing-song, voice pitched low and persuasive. “It’s not even the same mattress.”

“I’d fucking hope not, that’d be  _ disgusting _ .” Not that Levi’s hesitance has anything to do with that.

(Well,  _ mostly. _ )

Eren’s fingers start to dance higher up the inseam of Levi’s jeans, and Levi picks up Eren’s hand and moves it quite purposefully off his thigh, exhaling sharply through his nose.

“Didn’t we come here to help out?”

In all actuality, Levi’s not exactly sure  _ why _ they came here, only that it had seemed like the thing Eren needed most at the time. But it seems to be all on ceremony—nearly everything that isn’t essential for day-to-day living has already been boxed up. Everything worth keeping has already been shipped off to Carla’s new condo in Pasadena, and the rest of it is stacked neatly in the front parlor, waiting to be picked up for donation. There might be a few odds and ends, but nothing Carla couldn’t handle on her own.

Eren shrinks back, separating himself from Levi by a few hard, cold inches.

“With  _ what? _ ” He bites back, looking away. “Everything’s already done. Everything’s packed, everything’s sold, everything’s painted over and covered up.” Eren’s voice grows thick, and then he gives a fierce shake to his head and stands up abruptly. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He yanks his  _ entire _ duffle bag from where it had been set on his old desk, and then stalks through a door just across the hall. It closes with a slam, and Levi stares after him for a moment before sighing and falling back onto the bed. He stares up at the clean white ceiling and pushes his fingers through his hair.

Well. At least he finally has a solid idea about what’s been bothering Eren.

*

Carla’s kitchen is almost entirely in tact, and for a moment Levi pretends he can see what Eren’s life was like, once upon a time.

“Eren throwing a tantrum?” Carla asks good humoredly, her back to Levi as she works at chopping something.

_ Ah _ . So she’d heard the door slam. Then again, of course she had. She’s probably heard it a million times before.

Levi’s not sure he would call Eren’s behavior a  _ tantrum _ . Eren throwing his controller because it “wasn’t working” was a tantrum. Eren loudly watching movies in the living room when Levi has work to do and can’t join him was a tantrum. And at face value, this  _ is _ Eren storming off because Levi wouldn’t play into what he suspected were long-harbored sexual fantasies (not that he plans on telling his  _ mother _ that). And that would normally constitute as one of his husband’s tantrums.

But he knows it’s more than that. And he suspects that Carla knows that, too.

So he chooses instead to hum noncommitedly and change the subject.

“You have a lovely home, Carla.” It feels like such a stock phrase, but Levi finds he doesn’t know how to talk to his mother-in-law without the topic of Eren as a central crutch to the conversation.

Now that he’ll see her more than two-to-three times a year, he should probably learn how to talk to her like the wonderful son-in-law she seems to think he is.

“It was,” she says, without a hint of wistfulness. “So much work has gone into it over the last year, I hardly recognize it myself sometimes. But my realtor assured me that while people want the history and character of a house on the outside, they prefer the inside to be more modern.” She picks up her cutting board and Levi watches her slide chunks of peeled potato into a bowl waiting nearby. “A pity, in my opinion.”

Levi’s eyes take in the room again, and he finds himself wondering what this house used to look like. What this house used to feel like. It’s a good house, and even if it’s not what it was before, he still finds it beautiful.

The kitchen is filled with the pleasant sounds of cooking—the rumble of the heating oven, the hum of water nearing a boil, the steady staccato beat of Carla’s knife as it connects with the cutting board. They’re sounds that Levi associates with his own home, and he finds it strangely soothing.

“Are you making dinner?” It feels early and late for it at the same time—the unfortunate side effect of travel and time change. It’s just past 4 o’clock in LA, but the sun has long since set in New Hampshire. Dinner shouldn’t sound as appetizing as it does, but then again, it’s not like Levi ate what they passed off as food on their flight.

“I hope you like salmon,” she replies with a wave of her knife, her voice nearly in a sing-song.

It’s vaguely threatening. Even if Levi didn’t like salmon, he’d probably pretend to.

Feeling more uncomfortable than usual just  _ standing _ there, Levi takes a few awkward, purposeful steps further into the kitchen.

“Can I, uh, help?”

Maybe he should have stayed upstairs and waited for Eren.

Carla pauses in her chopping just long enough to look at Levi over her shoulder. She smiles.

“Absolutely not.” She turns him down so pleasantly it hardly sounds like a dismissal. “I could have used some help peeling the potatoes, but.” She shrugs, like Levi not appearing twenty minutes earlier wasn’t any kind of actual detriment. “If you want to sit and keep me company, though, I wouldn’t mind.” Carla gives a dip of her head, giving Levi a rather significant look, and then turns back to her potatoes.

Levi glances towards the stairs—he can still hear the running water from Eren’s shower. Even if he did go back up there and wait Eren out, then what? The only thing he’s going to get out of Eren by forcing him to talk about all of this is a fight. Eren needs space to figure his shit out, and when he does, Levi will be there.

He pulls out one of the stools tucked into the island’s bar, perching on it and hoping Carla doesn’t expect him to make small talk. He’s shit at forcing social interaction, which makes him  _ shit _ company. Thankfully, Carla probably knows at least  _ that _ much after seven years. Eren always talked enough for the both of them—Levi never had much need to be chatty.

“You know, I don’t ever get to host you boys,” she starts suddenly, depositing the cutting board and knife in the big farmhouse style sink before crossing over to the stove with her bowl of diced potato pieces. Levi’s eyes track her path. “Normally I’m the one staying in  _ your _ extra bedroom, after all, and if I’m lucky I can get up early enough to fix the two of you breakfast.” Carla winks at him conspiratorially. Eren always refuses to let his mom cook for them when she visits, but she always seems to find a way. Levi knows it comes from a place of caring, but he also knows that Eren is just a stubborn piece of shit.

Then again, so is Carla.

The urge to apologize comes over Levi in a sudden rush. 

They should have visited more.

When him and Eren started seeing each other, they should have flown out to see her and not the other way around. Levi and Eren could have spent a Thanksgiving or two in New Hampshire, and maybe even a Christmas. Eren could have said goodbye to his childhood home gradually instead of all at once, and Levi could have experienced the place where Eren grew up as it  _ had been _ instead of what is has been turned into.

But maybe Carla can sense it somehow, the way mothers always seem to sense things. Levi hears the lid of the pot slide into place, and then feels the gentle, warm touch of a hand to his forearm.

“I don’t blame you, you know,” she tells him, her gaze soft. “Either of you.” She smiles, encouragingly, and Levi stares down at the granite counter tops. Carla sighs, and she gives Levi’s arm several firm pats before the touch disappears entirely. When Levi glances up, she’s just resting there against the counter, pulling her greying hair away from her neck.

“Eren always hated it here,” she says, focused on her fingers and the way they twine her hair together into a braid. Levi watches her silently. “Portsmouth was too small for him.” She pauses, smiling to herself. “ _ New Hampshire _ was too small for him,” she corrects, softly. “He always wanted to get out, get away, find that great wide somewhere where he could make something of himself.” She tilts her head slightly, catching Levi’s eye. “You know, when he was in high school, sometimes he would skip school and catch a morning train down to Boston. I would get calls from his principal all the time, and no matter how angry I got—no matter what punishment I came up with, he would still go. I think maybe he was trying to remind himself that there was more to the world than—” Carla gestures with a wide sweeping gesture of her hand; to the kitchen, to the house, to the entirety of Portsmouth. “—all of this. That his dreams were attainable. And somewhere, along the way, he came to resent this place and everything about it.”

Carla has nothing to tie her hair into place, so she just leaves it unbound, slowly unfurling where it rests on her chest. When she looks at Levi head-on, she doesn’t look sad the way he might have expected. There’s no regret or resignation, but a long-rooted acceptance.

“I always knew he was going to leave. Now, California is quite a bit farther than I  _ expected _ ,” she explains, tailing it with a small chuckle. “I had been hoping he’d choose someplace like Boston, or New York. But it seemed he wanted something as far away and as different as he could get.”

Eren had been finishing up his last year in Santa Barbara when him and Levi had met. He doesn’t know very much about Portsmouth, but past it being a coastal town, Levi doubts it has many similarities.

“So I made peace with it a long time ago that Eren would leave and never come back, because that’s what he’d always wanted to do. I thought maybe he might come to love Portsmouth again someday, but he never quite fit here and I don’t think he’ll ever forgive it for that.” She shakes her head, and then pushes away from the counter and heads over to the fridge to resume her dinner preparation. 

“I think…” she begins as she sets a bag of brussel sprouts on the counter. “I think that maybe Eren is just now coming to terms with it, though. After I leave, he won’t have a reason to come back here that isn’t him simply  _ wanting _ to, and if he does…” She knocks on the counter, and for the first time she gazes at the kitchen and house around her with a sadness behind her eyes. “Well.” She shakes it off. “It’s easy to take something for granted when it’s always been there, isn’t it?”

It feels like a life lesson that extends further than talk of childhood homes and small towns, and there’s a clench in Levi’s chest that he doesn’t completely understand.

There’s a thunder of footsteps down the refinished wooden stairs, and Carla turns back to collecting her ingredients while Levi stares at the patterns in the granite thoughtfully.

“Are you making dinner?” Eren asks as he strides into the kitchen, hair towel-dried but still damp, and Carla laughs.

“Is that such a crime?” She looks over at her son in disbelief.

“Well,  _ no _ , but we could have gone out—”

“To be perfectly honest, Eren, I don’t know if I want to be seen in public with you with your hair like that.” She’s pulling out another cutting board, but this time she sets it on the island so she can angle herself towards Eren and Levi. “I don’t think you’ve cut it since the last time I saw you.”

Levi could probably attest to that, but he hasn’t minded Eren’s newest inclination towards being slightly shaggier. It works for him.

Eren rolls his eyes, coming to stand beside Levi with a grumbled  _ it’s my hair _ and  _ I’m nearly thirty _ . Levi doesn’t watch his approach, focused instead on Carla chopping up a slab of bacon whose purpose in their dinner he doesn’t quite understand, but Eren lets him know he’s there by a curling hand on his shoulder.

He squeezes once.  _ Sorry for getting upset _ , it says.

Levi reaches up and laces their fingers together.

_ You’re allowed to be upset _ , it says.

“Wait, Mom, are you making brussel sprouts?” Eren asks with the kind of enthusiasm nobody has for brussel sprouts. Carla doesn’t say anything, just glances up with a grin, and even though Levi feels like maybe he’s missing something here, he feels a strange completeness in the moment. 

He doesn’t question it.

He leans into Eren’s warmth, content.

*

With the sun long gone, the temperature outside has gone from cold to  _ frigid _ .

So, naturally, Eren decides the best place to disappear to after dinner is the backyard.

The lights from the kitchen throw long, golden rectangles onto the back porch through the French doors—a yellow brick road right to the edge where Eren is sitting, his legs dangling into the shadowy oblivion of his old backyard.

The darkness, the curl of his body, the way he’s staring into nothingness—Levi can’t help but remember finding Eren in the living room a few weeks ago.

This time, Levi doesn’t hesitate to bridge the distance.

“You couldn’t pick a warmer place to brood?” Levi asks as he approaches, teeth clenched against the chill in the air. Even in his sweats and a hoodie, he still feels like he’s seconds away from hypothermia.

“I’m not brooding,” Eren retorts in the sort of tone only someone who has been brooding would use. There’s a moodiness in his eyes that calms when he gets a good look at Levi, reaching up to pinch the fabric of Levi’s hoodie between his fingers. “This is mine.”

Levi doesn’t contest it. The hoodie is far too big on him, and has a glaring Overwatch logo on the front of it. Of course it’s Eren’s.

“No shit. Some of us prefer not to freeze our dicks off.” And the heaviest thing Levi brought that isn’t his huge coat is a cardigan. He had not been prepared for this weather  _ at all _ .

Eren rolls his eyes.

“It’s not  _ that _ cold,” he says, and dressed in jeans and a thin long sleeved t-shirt, Levi could almost believe he means it.

“Uh huh.” Levi shakes his head in tired exasperation, and then drapes the thick, heavy quilt he’d found in the closet under the stairs around Eren’s shoulders. “ _ Idiot _ ,” he mutters under his breath, and then sits next to said idiot on the freezing cold porch.

Sometimes loving someone requires certain sacrifices.

“Thanks for helping with the dishes, by the way,” Levi says as the silence stretches on, and Eren huffs out a laugh in response. Levi can see where it turns white in the air. Without acknowledging Levi’s comment, Eren lifts the edge of the quilt as an offering. Or maybe an apology. Levi rolls his eyes, but takes it. It’s fucking cold, after all.

And it’s much,  _ much _ warmer under the quilt next to Eren and his stupidly high body temperature.

“You’re so cozy like this,” Eren hums happily, his hand finding Levi’s waist as he pulls him closer. His nose is cold where it presses into Levi’s cheek, and Levi wants to point out that they would be much cozier inside. Where there’s central heating and no wind chill.

He doesn’t.

Just pushes Eren’s face away with a, “Your nose is cold as fuck.”

Eren grins, but it doesn’t look as easy as it usually does.

“Yeah, well, your hands aren’t so great, either,” Eren counters, but takes one of Levi’s popsicle hands between his own. Eren’s hands are always so  _ warm _ .

“Did my mom go to bed?” Eren asks after a few quiet moments of holding Levi’s hand.

Levi hums in the affirmative. “She asked what we wanted for breakfast.”

“What’d you say?”

“That I didn’t give a shit.”

This time, when Eren laughs, it’s a lot more boisterous, Eren’s body jostling against Levi’s in a way that would be unpleasant if Levi wasn’t so wonderfully accustomed to it.

“I hope it’s pancakes…” he says wistfully, and shifts closer to Levi.

They’re both lucky Eren runs so warm, otherwise they might freeze to death, just sitting out here like this. It’s not like Levi has that much of an aversion to the cold, but he doesn’t normally  _ sit _ in it. For  _ fun _ . He likes the cold when he’s bundled properly against it, or is separated from it by thick, insulated walls.

His nose is so fucking cold it might fall off.

But even if he hates being out here, he can understand why Eren is. The backyard is all dark silhouettes—hills and trees and flowers like paper cutouts against a clear night sky. But it’s the sky that’s the real draw. It’s not that Levi’s never seen stars before, but compared to his normal view of them, this one takes his breath away. You can’t see a night sky like this in LA, even in the least light-polluted areas.

Eren breathes deeply next to him.

“What was your childhood home like?”

Levi blinks his very cold eyes at the odd question, glancing sideways at Eren for just a moment before shifting his gaze forward again.

He feels like his answer is not the one Eren is looking for.

“It was a shitty apartment in one of the shitter neighborhoods in the Valley. It was my uncle’s, but we lived with him,” he says without a trace of fondness or nostalgia, staring at the place where the stars disappear into the black paper horizon. “My mom was raising me on her own, and her health was never good. So he took us in, and took some of the weight off her shoulders.” Levi has no love lost for his uncle—they haven’t spoken in decades. But even if he never cared much for Levi, he would have done anything for Kuchel. 

“We lived there for seven years until one of my mom’s friends got her a job in an office, and we were able to move into a studio apartment, just us.” He’s not even sure he could find that old studio apartment if he wanted to. It hadn’t been a nice place, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the entire building had been torn down at some point. “Lived there for a few years, moved somewhere else.” Somewhere better. Somewhere cleaner. Somewhere maybe Levi would get in less fights at school.

“I guess you could call one of those a childhood home if you wanted, but I’ve lived in so many places I never really had one. Hell, even the townhouse my mom lives in right now she only moved into about five years ago. I stopped living with her long before that.”

It’s weird to think about in hindsight, but Levi didn’t exactly have a conventional upbringing. Why would it include something as normal as a  _ home _ ?

“You didn’t have a home?” Eren’s voice sounds like it shakes out of him, and Levi’s eyes snap to him in alarm.

“Fuck, don’t get upset about it, it’s not that big of a deal.” At least, it isn’t to Levi. It never has been. “I had food and shelter, and that was fucking enough, believe me,” he intones, not sure he could ever fully relay what it was like back then. How miserable it was to live by the skin of your teeth, to  _ just _ get by. To Levi, where he lived never mattered. It mattered that he had a place to go at all. And—

“And… I had my mom. I guess if I had any concept of home, it was her.”

And now… Well.

Now it’s Eren.

“But if you wanted to recreate this experience, pretty sure my uncle still lives in that same fucking apartment.” Not that Levi has ever had any inclination to go back there.

He’s never really been the nostalgic type.

Eren grins, but it lacks any humor.

“No, I just…” He bites his lip, chewing over whatever he plans on saying and then letting it out in a rush of words. “When my mom told me she was selling the house, I almost bought it.”

Levi closes his eyes for a moment.

So much for Eren being perfectly reasonable at any point in his life.

“You what.” It’s not even a question, because Levi is hardly all that surprised. Of course Eren had almost done that. If nothing else, Levi should have been more suspicious of the fact that it  _ didn’t _ happen.

“I didn’t,” Eren justifies morosely, and Levi levels him with a blank stare. “I know, I  _ know _ , it was just… An impulse, or something. I don’t know. But then I realized you would probably be super pissed off at me if I bought a house without at least  _ mentioning _ it to you first.”

“I married the biggest idiot on the planet,” Levi says to the night sky, and Eren butts his shoulder against him.

“Yeah, but I’m… Your idiot?” His voice hedges, hopefully.

“I’m trying to insult you. Stop making it cute.” Levi reaches up and ruffles Eren’s hair. Thank fuck it’s fully dry, otherwise Eren might  _ actually _ get hypothermia. “Don’t you think your mom, who is selling this house so she can move to California to be  _ closer _ to you, would also be super fucking pissed if you just moved back here instead?”

Eren’s silence is answer enough, even before his delayed, “...yeah, I never got that far.”

Levi sighs heavily, but his disappointment is disrupted by Eren suddenly maneuvering his way under Levi’s arm despite being a good nine inches taller than him. Levi doesn’t fight it, just settles his arm as comfortably as possible around Eren’s shoulders. It’s a setup that’s familiar to them, especially considering the fact that Levi is about a hundred times more likely to crawl into Eren’s arms than vice-versa.

Levi presses his cold nose into Eren’s clean hair, and then follows it with a soft kiss for good measure.

“Smile,” Eren mutters, and, before Levi has a chance to react, there’s a flash. Levi jerks away, frowning.

“Really?”

“What?” To Eren’s credit, he doesn’t immediately post the picture to whatever app it’s destined for, instead slipping his phone back in his pocket. “I’ve been on a social media blackout for nearly 18 hours. People are going to think I’ve died.”

“A tragedy,” Levi drawls, and Eren elbows him in the ribs without any actual force behind it. He’s tense for a few moments afterwards, waiting for Levi’s inevitable retaliation, and only lets his body sink against Levi’s when it doesn’t come.

Levi leans his cheek to Eren’s temple, his head suddenly heavy as the exhaustion from traveling starts to creep up on him (or maybe the hypothermia is finally setting in, who fucking knows). He can’t put this off any longer.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” He finally asks in the only way he’s ever been good at—bluntly. Still, it’s softer than it would be with anyone else.

Eren jerks against him, clearly also on the verge of sleep-and-or-hypothermia, Levi’s question having caught him off guard.

“W-what? I’m not— _ nothing’s _ wrong.”

Eren is an exceptional liar when he wants to be.

“I’m. I’m fine. One-hundred percent good. Hunky-dory, even. I mean, maybe something’s wrong with  _ you _ . Are  _ you _ okay?”

He’s shit when he wants to get caught.

“Eren.” Levi pulls him a little closer, squeezes his shoulder, and then Eren’s fingers find his and lace tightly.

"What? It’s really nothing I just…” He sighs, long and drawn outgrunts, almost as if he’s angry. “...I  _ hate _ this place.” He chuckles, dark and bitter. “I really... Fucking hate this place. I always have. Just  _ being _ here makes me feel angry, and I couldn’t even tell you why exactly. It’s like I’m a teenager again, and somehow I’m going to get stuck here just like I was then, and I fucking _hate_ it. But the anger I get. I can deal with the anger. I just don’t understand why I’m so...” Eren’s mouth seems to get tangled up on the words, and it almost makes Levi want to laugh. They’ve known each other nearly a decade, and they’re both still shit at talking about their feelings.

It’s a good thing they have one another, to fill in each other’s blanks.

“Sad?” Levi supplies, and Eren wilts, the anger coming out in a long exhale of white.

“Sad. Yeah? Maybe?” Eren sounds like he doesn’t quite accept the idea that he might be  _ sad _ about all this. Sure, Levi could give two fucks about all the places he grew up, but he’s seen the way Eren looks at this place. He didn’t have Levi’s rough and tumble childhood. This house is a monument to his childhood, and he loves it for that. And maybe Levi will never understand that first-hand, but he can empathize.

Anyone with that kind of attachment to a place is bound to feel some kind of sadness when it’s gone.

“Like, I’m really excited for my mom to move. I can’t  _ wait _ to see her more. So it’s dumb to be sad about something that’s so fucking amazing, right? So it’s not ,like,  _ sad _ as much as it’s… I don’t know. It’s like a weight, kind of. A weight that feels something like disappointment, but more like...” Eren pauses abruptly, like something just occurred to him. Levi gives him the time he needs—if he interrupts after the ball of Eren’s emotions has just started rolling, he’ll never be able to get it started again.

Eren shifts in Levi’s hold, disrupting where Levi is leaning against him until he gets to a point where they can look at one another.

“Look, this might sound... Weird, or random, but… Have you ever felt like you were incomplete? Like you lost a piece of yourself somehow?”

“Yes,” Levi answers without hesitation, without thinking about it. He’s always felt like there were parts of him missing. Important parts. Parts that made him normal. Like maybe he was broken. Like maybe he was never meant to be a whole person. Sometimes, finding empty pieces in yourself was the only way to explain why you were so miserable.

He’d never believed all that bullshit about finding people to complete you, and he still doesn’t. But people who help you complete yourself? Turns out those are real. Eren had been just one of those people, and he’s helped Levi find a lot of his pieces. But so has his mom, and Mikasa, and Erwin, and as much as he’s loathe to admit it,  _ Hanji _ . But even now, months away from forty, Levi knows he’s still incomplete.

He’s come to terms with the fact that maybe people aren’t meant to be finished.

“Well… A part of me has always felt kind of like it was missing. Not like, a big part, or anything,” he rushes to add, as if not being completely fulfilled by what he has is something Levi might hold against him (again, he is married to the biggest  _ idiot _ on the planet). “Just…  _ Something _ . Something big enough that I can  _ feel _ it, but not, like, so detrimental that I’m not happy or anything. Most of the time I don’t think about it, but some days… Some days it’s harder to ignore.”

Eren’s lips form a small, sad smile, and he stares down at the pattern of the quilt thoughtfully.

“I… I guess for a long time I thought…” He huffs out a disbelieving breath, eyes widening. “I don’t know. That maybe it was here? Somehow? That maybe part of me  _ was _ Portsmouth and it got left behind because I didn’t want anything to do with this place anymore. That I didn’t want anything to do with who I was when I lived here. And when I left for Santa Barbara, I think… Maybe I chopped that part of me off and left it. And maybe I thought that, one day, I wouldn’t hate this place. That I’d learn to love it again. And I could come back. And get it.” Eren swallows. “When I was ready.”

Eren’s eyebrows furrow, and he doesn’t twist away but his eyes seem to travel somewhere very far away.

“But… It’s not. It’s not here, Levi. Maybe it was, when this place was my  _ home _ , but… It isn’t. Not anymore. This house… It’s just a fucking house.” He sounds nearly hysterical as he says it. “It’s just a fucking house.” There’s a hollowness in Eren’s voice that has Levi pulling him closer, better at comforting with touch than with words, and Eren curls against him. “It’s not my home anymore,” he admits, quietly. “That’s… It’s gone. It’s  _ gone _ . And even if I tore down all the new walls and stripped off all the new paint… It wouldn’t be there. It’s gone. And whatever piece of me was still here is gone with it. I… I was too late.”

Eren isn’t crying, not quite, but Levi feels a few, hot tears hit the skin of his neck, and he holds Eren’s quivering shoulders just a little bit tighter.

“I—” Eren breathes harshly, fighting to keep his emotions from taking control, and Levi rubs down his back. “I wish I could have shown it to you.”

“I know,” Levi says quietly. He presses a kiss to Eren’s forehead. “I know.”

“I wish I could go back to what it was, and I wish I could show it to you.” Eren presses his face into Levi’s shoulder, clutching at him. “I wish I could go back and find the piece of me that I lost here.”

Levi wishes Eren could go back, too. Wishes that Eren could find the closure he so desperately wants, even if Levi doesn’t think it exists.

“I love all the pieces you have,” Levi whispers softly into Eren’s hair, stroking his back. “And maybe you can’t get that piece back, but… Maybe you’ll find a new piece. A piece that fits even better.”

Eren presses impossibly closer, and Levi holds him quietly, pressing kiss after kiss to Eren’s hairline and promising  _ you’ll be okay _ and  _ it’ll be all right _ . He can’t replace what Eren’s lost. He can’t bring back his childhood home.

“Hey,” Levi says, when Eren’s calmed down and his breathing is more-or-less back to normal. “Tell me about where you grew up.”

He can’t bring back Eren’s childhood home. But that doesn’t mean Eren has to let it go completely.

Eren picks his face up off of Levi’s chest, slowly lifting his head so he can glance up. He didn’t cry enough to make his face puffy, but his eyes are clear in that way they only get after crying.

Levi pushes away the remnant of a tear with his thumb.

“What?” Eren asks in a hush.

“Tell me about where you grew up,” Levi reiterates, pushing Eren’s bangs back off his forehead. Eren’s face follows the contact, nuzzling into Levi’s palm when it’s offered. “Tell me about all the games you used to play, and all the messes you made. Tell me about how you would decorate for Christmas, and Halloween. Tell me about how you’d stay cool in the summer. Tell me about growing up in a place where the leaves change color. Tell me about all the adventures you had. Hell, tell me about all the hearts you broke.” Levi’s thumb makes a circle against Eren’s cheekbone as he pauses. “But maybe don’t tell me about any more of the weird sexual fantasies you had about me five years before we even met.”

Eren laughs then—it’s small, and brittle, and barely a sound, but it’s there.

“Yeah.” Eren closes his eyes, and then presses a kiss to the meat of Levi’s palm. “Yeah, okay.”

Levi shifts his hand, carding it through Eren’s hair.

“But maybe tell me inside? I can’t feel my legs, it’s so  _ fucking _ cold out here.”

Eren leans toward him, butting their foreheads together, and then nods. They somehow manage their way to standing, still tangled up in the quilt and each other, and this time Levi steps closer, shivering as the cold attacks the newly available areas of his body that it couldn’t reach before. Eren wraps his arms around him eagerly, holding him as close as he can.

“Hey,” he says into Levi’s ear, and Levi hums softly, feeling drowsy again even though they’re standing. “I love you.”

Levi gives a nudge against Eren’s body, trying to herd him back inside, but has enough of a vantage that he can still press a kiss to the underside of Eren’s jaw as he does so.

“Love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> [like this fic? please support me on tumblr and like/reblog it! <3](http://missmichellebelle.tumblr.com/post/169544741205/from-the-house-that-built-me)  
>  OKAY SO some notes on this
> 
> \+ my best friend and I talk a lot about our childhood homes. his was sacrificed in his parent's divorce, and mine was sold after my mom died. and there's... idk. there's something about childhood homes that, the older you get, the more you kind of long to return to them? the idea that you lose a piece of yourself in those places comes from my friend, though. I don't believe you can ever get that piece back, that it's a part of yourself you're meant to lose, but that doesn't mean you don't long for it.
> 
> \+ that's kind of the idea I rolled with. _a home to which you cannot return_. it's that nostalgic homesickness. it's longing for a certain thing or place as it was in a certain time, but it's impossible to ever get back there. I don't know if I conveyed that as well as I could have in this piece, but, well, it kind of turned into a monster and got away from me a little bit lol.
> 
> \+ I also wanted to play with the idea of home as a place, and home as a person and/or a selection of people. I've known people in both camps, and I personally fall on the _home as a person/people_ side of things, but there was a time in my life when I longed for a physical home. and I still do, sometimes, even though I know my idea of home is more defined by the people around me now than it is by a physical structure.


End file.
